I think that Rushdie may be onto something in this. Giving an ungrateful and uncooperative world a taste of Pax Americana may not be worth the very great effort it will entail, and is highly unassured of any success, lasting or otherwise. Doing anything else and not getting killed in the process, there's the rub. I haven't any answers, but I'd bet a year's salary I'm not the only one thinking about it.
You are actually on to something.
Acting as global policeman is not sustainable. I strongly suspect that once Iraq is wrapped up, we will then begin to concentrate on the Pacific while maintaining operational tempo against Al Qaeda in that phase of the war.
The fall of Hussein and the subsequent collapse (in the fullness of time) of the Iranian Theocracy will take much of the wind out of the sails of Arab radicalism. Oil will still flow, of course. It must. They can't eat it; the Arabs will have to sell it at market price, or watch their market share go to a newly confident Russian oil industry.
We will be in a position to adopt a policy of armed neutrality. This is not a return to isolationism, but rather a contraction of the defensive line to the CONUS and the Pacific Theater.
Let's face it; Europe isn't under threat from Russia, and it's not important anymore. Were it not for oil, the Persian Gulf region would be a strategic backwater. That is where it is headed.
Bush's instincts are actually leading this way. He is a strict national interest guy. That's why there is a distaste in the White House for foreign actions such as nation building. Notice that we have leapt to action overseas only because of national security concerns! A bomb that can blow up Tel Aviv can just as easily be detonated in southern Manhattan. That is the whole driving idea behind the Iraq operation-we have to get Saddam before he takes his revenge on us by way of Al Qaeda and its rather talented crew of suicide operatives.
The war on terror will be continued, but once Iraq is off the boards, I don't see another problem coming down the road until the Chicoms decide to get nasty in the Taiwan Strait. Kim Jong Il can be handled: the Chicoms want peace in their northwestern frontier and they don't want to see one trading partner, South Korea, destroyed while another, Japan, instantly resurrects the Imperial Japanese Navy (a fleet that is far more powerful than is generally imagined).
Eventually, some farsighted politician will come along and make a grand bargain with the American people: a "new citizenship" based on national service for a period of years, followed by duty in the reserves, in return for very focused and very resolute concentration on "vital national interest" (defense of the Homeland and the Western Hemisphere, Britain and the other ECHELON powers-Aussie, Canuckland, and New Zealand). In other words: we trade the National Greatness Conservatives in for something that Buchanan might be more familiar with.
War drove Rome into penury decade after decade. Very few times in its history was Rome in solid financial shape (the Dictatorship of Sulla and, for a time, that of the great Julius, were two periods of calm and prosperity). So it will be with us unless we adopt more of a neutralist, anti-imperialist, but armed foreign policy.
However, there is one thing. We could be the nicest guys on God's good earth, but someday, some Jihadist sumbitches will try to bring the ultimate in sumbitchery, atomic weapons, to one of our cities. We have to gird ourselves for the kind of response that would not only terrify the entire Muslim world in a single stroke, but also would be entirely understood by the Romans.
There comes a time when survival is in question. If it comes down to a choice between Us and Them, Americans will vote for Us.
And it won't be a very happy day for Them.
I wish I were wrong, but I don't think I am.
Be Seeing You,
Chris